Current Obsession: Could you tell us how the CJST artist collective started and what motivated you to establish it?
Takayoshi Terajima & Takashi Kojima: The idea emerged after Terajima participated in Schmucksymposium, an international symposium dedicated to contemporary jewellery held in Germany in May 2019. This experience highlighted the need for a platform where artists and professionals in Japan could independently discuss the current situation and challenges facing contemporary jewellery in their own country.
Although inspired by Schmucksymposium, our primary focus was to develop discussions rooted in Japan’s own cultural and social context.
We felt it was essential to create an environment where we could think, question and discuss contemporary jewellery in Japanese, using our own language and perspectives.
CJST is therefore more than a collective for artistic exchange. Through jewellery as a form of artistic expression, we aim to connect artists, researchers, curators, companies and wider society, creating a new cultural foundation for contemporary jewellery in Japan.
CO: How do CJST’s various initiatives shape the way contemporary jewellery is received in Japan?
TT & TK: Contemporary jewellery developed particularly in post-war Europe as a movement that sought to liberate jewellery from its traditional conventions and established values. Artists and designers challenged existing assumptions about materials, forms, functions and purposes, questioning the use of precious metals and gemstones, the role of jewellery as decoration or property, its relationship with the body and even the definition of jewellery itself.
However, at CJST, we are particularly interested in the question that follows this process of liberation:
‘What can we do with jewellery once it has been liberated?’
We see jewellery as a distinctive form of artistic expression capable of connecting the body with society, culture, history and institutions. Wearing, viewing, making and encountering others are all actions through which new relationships can emerge. We believe that these relationships are among the most important possibilities offered by jewellery.
CJST currently develops four main projects:
Symposiums provide a platform for raising critical questions about contemporary jewellery and encouraging discussions among artists, researchers and professionals from different disciplines.
Open-call exhibitions create opportunities for artists to present their work while introducing contemporary jewellery to wider audiences and developing new relationships with viewers and collectors.
Museum donations aim to encourage the acquisition of contemporary jewellery by public museums, helping to establish a cultural foundation through which these works can be researched, exhibited, preserved and passed on to future generations.
Jewellery Week extends our activities beyond museums and galleries into the city itself, using jewellery as a starting point to connect people, cultures, communities and businesses.
These projects are not separate initiatives but interconnected activities. Discussions inspire artistic practices, artworks encounter society and those encounters generate further questions and conversations. Through this continuous process, we hope CJST can become a cultural hub connecting different disciplines, communities and generations, while contributing to new movements in contemporary jewellery.
CO: KYOTOOOOOOO JEWELRY 2026 coincides with a major museum exhibition, transforming the city into a platform for contemporary jewellery. How did this project take shape, what drew you to Kyoto and what legacy do you hope to build?
TT & TK: This October, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, will open Reflections in Jewellery: Memory and Identity, its first major jewellery exhibition of this scale in approximately 40 years. We saw this as a rare opportunity and wanted to extend the impact of the exhibition beyond the museum into the city itself.
Taking Munich Jewellery Week as one of our references, we began developing KYOTOOOOOOO JEWELRY 2026 as a new project adapted to Japan’s cultural and social environment. We gradually realised that Kyoto brings together many of the elements necessary to create such a platform.
First, the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, holds a collection of more than 100 jewellery works, including pieces from the 1980s and 1990s. This collection provides an important cultural resource for understanding jewellery from historical and academic perspectives. Kyoto is also home to a remarkable range of traditional crafts, including gold leaf, lacquer, textiles and woodworking, with many highly skilled craftspeople continuing these practices today. At the same time, the city has numerous art universities, galleries and cultural institutions, and new initiatives are emerging in contemporary art, photography and design. One of Kyoto’s greatest strengths is the coexistence of its long cultural history with new artistic practices. Furthermore, Kyoto is internationally recognised and attracts visitors from around the world, yet it is considerably more compact than Tokyo. We believe this makes it particularly suitable for a jewellery week, where visitors can explore different venues across the city and encounter artworks, artists and local communities along the way.
Another significant factor is the presence of NIWAKA, one of Japan’s leading jewellery companies, whose headquarters are located in Kyoto. NIWAKA shares our vision and has generously supported the project as its official partner. Rather than opposing fields, we believe that contemporary and commercial jewellery develop jewellery culture in complementary ways.
KYOTOOOOOOO JEWELRY 2026 will bring together exhibitions, sales events, workshops and other activities across 43 venues throughout Kyoto. One of the highlights is the Jewellery Walk Rally, an interactive programme in which visitors collect jewellery components from participating venues and gradually assemble their own necklace as they explore the city.
We do not intend KYOTOOOOOOO JEWELRY to be a one-off event. We are already developing ideas for the next edition and aim to establish it as a biennial event. Our immediate goal is to learn from this first edition, identify its strengths and challenges and gradually develop the project over time. Ultimately, our ambition is not simply to organise another jewellery event in Japan, but to establish a sustainable cultural platform in Kyoto from which new perspectives on jewellery can be shared with the world.
CO: How do you view the current landscape of Japanese contemporary jewellery, especially given the tendency for it to be looked at through a Western historical lens?
TT & TK: Japan has a long and diverse history of bodily adornment and decorative practices. However, these traditions did not necessarily develop within the same conceptual or historical framework as what came to be understood as ‘jewellery’ in the West. We believe this issue is closely related to the history of art in Japan.
During the modernisation of Japan, various existing forms of artistic and material culture were reorganised through the introduction of the Western concept of ‘fine art’. Within this process, the category of ‘Japanese art’ was also constructed, and Japanese artistic practices came to be understood and discussed in relation to Western art history. Today, Japanese contemporary art has established a significant international presence while continuing to negotiate this complex historical background.
We see a similar structure in Japanese contemporary jewellery. Historically, there has been a tendency within Japanese contemporary jewellery to connect Western concepts and formats of jewellery with Japanese philosophies, techniques, materials and cultural traditions. Of course, this approach has produced many outstanding works.
However, we also feel that there are certain limitations to a system in which artistic originality is evaluated primarily through differences from Western jewellery history. Yet if Western jewellery history continues to function as the primary framework of evaluation, Japanese artists may remain in a position where their work is recognised or selected according to values established elsewhere. We want to question this structure itself.
For us, an important starting point is to reconsider jewellery not as a style or category belonging to a particular national or regional history, but as an artistic practice grounded in the relationship between the body and society.
Jewellery has distinctive characteristics: it can exist in close proximity to the body, be worn, carried, exchanged and passed from one person to another. Through these actions, jewellery can make visible relationships involving personal memory, social institutions, cultural values and human interactions. By beginning with these fundamental characteristics, we believe it becomes possible to explore jewellery as an artistic form without depending on Western jewellery history as its primary point of reference.
We are artists who grew up within Japanese cultural contexts and have each developed different experiences and perspectives. What interests us is how those experiences shape our understanding of the body, society and culture, and how these relationships can be expressed through jewellery. In this sense, we do not believe the uniqueness of Japanese contemporary jewellery lies exclusively in particular materials, techniques or recognisably Japanese aesthetics. Rather, we believe its future potential lies in how individual artists approach jewellery from their own cultural and social positions, and what questions they choose to raise through this form of artistic expression.
KYOTOOOOOOO JEWELRY 2026
Oct. 24 – Nov. 1
Explore the whole programme here.
Cover Image
Illustrative photo • The Jewellery Walk Rally • A participatory programme through which you can collect keepsakes and create your own necklace by visiting different locations of Kyotooooooo Jewelry 2026 •
